Implantable medical devices are commonly used to treat patients with various conditions. By way of example, conditions of the heart such as tachycardia, bradycardia, and heart failure, amongst others, are now routinely treated using implantable cardiac rhythm management (CRM) devices. In addition, various conditions such as epilepsy, chronic pain, Parkinson's Disease, and depression can now be treated using implantable neurostimulation devices.
Patients with such implantable devices may periodically visit clinicians for follow-up appointments. During these follow-up appointments, clinicians may perform tasks such as adjusting the therapy settings of the implanted device in addition to accessing and reviewing data gathered by the device. In order to perform these tasks, the clinician will typically use an external device, such as a programmer-recorder-monitor (PRM) device in order to interrogate the implanted medical device and reprogram it if necessary.
When programming and data acquisition activities are complete, the interrogation session between the implanted device and the PRM device can be terminated. Session termination generally requires some affirmative action on the part of the operator of the PRM device.